Thinking in Sound: Jackson Milas on Meditating Outside of the Culture
Jackson Milas began his composing career at age 21 in New York City, as the lead singer of hugely successful band High Highs.
At Sonar, his award-winning scores for series such as Erotic Stories and Bloom has lead him to collaborate with Tim Minchin on the massively popular TV Show, Upright. Jackson has also composed music for documentaries such as, Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles and Books That Made Us.
His contributions to the large-scale installation Temple at VIVID Sydney 2022 is a highlight of his innovative approach to music. He has found commercial success with clients such as Carlton Draught.
LBB> When you’re working on a new brief or project, what’s your typical starting point? How do you break it down and how do you like to generate your ideas or response?
Jackson> Straight after the brief or the initial creative conversation with a director, I usually turn to the piano and hit record. It can be anything, even an iphone voice memo. There’s just something in capturing that initial burst and intuitive response before your mind has had a chance to get analytical. From there it’s about showing up consistently and following that initial idea.
LBB> Music and sound are in some ways the most collaborative and interactive forms of creativity - what are your thoughts on this? Do you prefer to work solo or with a gang - and what are some of your most memorable professional collaborations?
Jackson> Collaboration gives a project vitality and the gang at Sonar is a crucial part of my creative life. I always knock on the door of one of my collaborators and get their thoughts on something I’ve written. Sometimes it’s important just to be able to laugh about something together. I really enjoyed working with Tim Minchin on both series of Upright, he was very involved and attentive to what we were doing musically and it was a healthy creative relationship. I don’t think I could ever truly work alone. Even on my solo album ‘Blu Terra’ there were a lot of inspiring people who contributed to that recording and made the project a reality: Dave Harrington from Darkside, Tim Lefebvre, Veronique Serret to name a few.
LBB> What’s the most satisfying part of your job and why?
Jackson> David Lynch said “cinema is image and sound moving together in time”. There’s something in the mystery of how your own set of influences interacts with the images on screen and the vision of a director and sometimes you end up with a piece of music that couldn’t have been made in isolation and elevates the combination of sound and image into something beyond what we all imagined in the brief. When that happens, it’s the best.
LBB> As the advertising industry changes, how do you think the role of music and sound is changing with it?
Jackson> The Tik Tok superhighway has created more space for weirdness, which is kind of interesting. But we’ve also seen a real response to the noise with our collaborators increasingly asking for music that is genuinely handcrafted and honest.
LBB> Who are your musical or audio heroes and why?
Jackson> Mark Hollis, Mica Levi, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Nicholas Britell, Angelo Badalamenti... that’s just today. A lot of my favorite composers are masters of mood and texture, and maybe minimalism. But i also love composers like Nicholas Britell who paint in big rich colours (‘If Beale St Could Talk’). Sometimes a film score just needs to go for it.
LBB> And when it comes to your particular field, whether sound design or composing, are there any particular ideas or pioneers that you go back to frequently or who really influence your thinking about the work you do?
Jackson> I think of people like Hildur Guðnadóttir, Warren Ellis, and Ryuichi Sakamoto as important influence because they’re known for making their own sounds. They like getting their hands dirty and working with audio, which is what I love. I really value my time spent on the road touring with a band, I feel like that experience gives you gumption for being in the studio.
I would love to work on a project with a strong sense of place and travel to the location to record atmospheres and begin the composition process there, similar to what Hildur did with her amazing work on Chernobyl.
LBB> When you’re working on something that isn’t directly sound design or music (lets say going through client briefs or answering emails) - are you the sort of person who needs music and noise in the background or is that completely distracting to you? What are your thoughts on ‘background’ sound and music as you work?
Jackson> “It’s good background music” can feel like one of the most insulting things someone can say about your work. But I have a Tivoli radio in the kitchen tuned to Classic FM, so every morning classical masterpiece after masterpiece is blasting out of the speaker as i essentially do whatever. So i’m just as bad. I know my last project High Highs continues to have a lot of success on “afternoon chill” playlists and the like. I think it’s pretty cool when your music resonates with any aspect of someones life, even if it is chilling.
I don’t get to listen to as much new music as i’d like, so I listen to radio shows on NTS and Worldwide FM when i’m doing clerical tasks like tax as an opportunity to hear some new music.
LBB> I guess the quality of the listening experience and the context that audiences listen to music/sound in has changed over the years. There’s the switch from analogue to digital and now we seem to be divided between bad-ass surround-sound immersive experiences and on-the-go, low quality sound (often the audio is competing with a million other distractions) - how does that factor into how you approach your work?
Jackson> I listen to music on my airpods, through my laptop and phone speakers, we all do it. It’s important for a mix to sound good across all the devices and that's something we consider at the mix stage. I don’t let it influence the music itself.
LBB> On a typical day, what does your ‘listening diet’ look like?
Jackson> Classical music first thing in the morning with coffee, then it’s all downhill from there. Usually by the end of the day I’m listening to a ghost podcast called Other World which my producer put me onto.
LBB> Do you have a collection of music/sounds and what shape does it take (are you a vinyl nerd, do you have hard drives full of random bird sounds, are you a hyper-organised spotify-er...)?
Jackson> I have a record collection of about 1000 records. I’m not a hoarder, I do refine and my approach is quality over quantity. But the records I do have are some of my most valued possessions - they are so beautiful. I have a few records of field recordings, one is the sounds of Bahia recorded in 1977 by the label Sound Image. I want to collect more Italian film soundtracks from the 70s. My Spotify and apple music are both fairly chaotic.
LBB> Outside of the music and sound world, what sort of art or topics really excite you and do you ever relate that back to music (e.g. history buffs who love music that can help you travel through time, gamers who love interactive sound design... I mean it really could be anything!!)
Jackson> I’m increasingly interested in music for the art world, if that counts as an answer! Kali Malone’s commissioned score for the Louise Bourgeois exhibition in Sydney was inspiring. I was lucky enough to contribute an original score to an installation for Vivid Festival in 2022 with the artists Leila Jeffreys and Melvin J. Montalban. We’re just starting work on a second one which will debut at Vivid 2024 in May.
I’m not really into ‘meditation culture’ but I meditate twice a day and I have found it to be really useful creatively. After some time doing it you seem to just know how to handle an idea. Though the answer is almost always to let time do it’s thing and be patient.
I'd also like to shout out Australian composer Christoper Larkin’s score for the game Hollow Knight. I like video games sometimes, it’s unlike any other form of relaxation. You have to devote your full attention to it, so your mind actually has a break.
LBB> Let’s talk travel! It’s often cited as one of the most creatively inspiring things you can do - I’d love to know what are the most exciting or inspiring experiences you’ve had when it comes to sound and music on your travels?
Jackson> I run a small record label (Pique-nique Recordings) with two friends based in New York, and our first release in 2016 was of traditional Moroccan music (gnawa) by the NYC group Innov Gnawa. It’s a tradition of music that i love, and I’m yet to visit it’s home.
Places that have inspired in the past are Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Festival in the south of France. New Orleans. Tasmania in the winter.
LBB> As we age, our ears change physically and our tastes evolve too, and life changes mean we don’t get to engage in our passions in the same intensity as in our youth - how has your relationship with sound and music changed over the years?
Jackson> I’m in the studio a lot which is wonderful, I’m very grateful to be busy. But for me DJing and playing live is a crucial part of the ecosystem. These elements all feed each other and sharing music with others in this way is something I'm excited to do a lot more of with new projects in the coming years.
